Thank the Government for the Ghetto
One of the conditions of employment as managing editor for Whiskey & Gunpowder—aside from rabid adherence to Austrian School economics—was relocation to Baltimore. I really didn’t think much of it at the time. I’d spent nearly my entire life in one of the four boroughs of the City of New York (anyone who’s lived there can tell you that secession-longing Staten Island doesn’t count) and I was ready for a change of employment and venue. Writing for Agora in a smaller and more affordable mid-Atlantic city seemed the perfect prescription.
A couple of trips to Baltimore during the interview process only served to convince me that life here would be much better. Agora’s “corporate campus” is comprised of a handful of beautiful buildings in the center of the Mount Vernon neighborhood, one of the best-preserved bits of historic urbanism in the U.S…and I’m an absolute sucker for historic urbanism. I’d be able to live in an architecturally lovely part of a cheaper city, just a couple minutes’ walk from work that I would truly enjoy. What could be better?
I even did the usual due diligence and wandered around a bit at night to get a truer sense of how safe the neighborhood really was. Thing is, a cursory walk-through cannot substitute for actually living in a place. For example, I’m sure even downtown Baghdad has its moments; you’d have to stick around a bit to see exactly why the property values are so low in places. I’ve since come to know just how unsettling this otherwise lovely neighborhood can be in the dead of night. I’d heard endless stories of how rough Baltimore was (“Haven’t you seen The Wire?”) and I knew it looked bad on paper, but what I’d seen of historic Mount Vernon assuaged any doubts…until I actually moved in…
My last neighborhood in New York was historic as well—in fact, last year it became NYC’s newest designated historic district—but it felt safer by an order of magnitude. I would often venture out to the local 24-hour grocery stores or all-night food carts at 2 or 3 in the morning. There were many other times I couldn’t sleep in the hours past midnight and would walk the ten blocks to the 24-hour gym. I can’t remember once feeling the least bit afraid while doing so. New York has had the distinction of being the safest big city in America for a while, a phenomenon I’ll address in a bit. Baltimore’s not nearly as big…nor nearly as safe.
Ironically Baltimore does resemble the fictional New York in the movie adaptation of the classic Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. For those of you who didn’t catch that Will Smith vehicle, the plot in the movie is as follows: a treatment that was supposed to cure mankind of an age-old plague becomes a virus that transforms over 99% of humanity into violent, blood-sucking, mindless monsters.
I hope you see where I’m going with this.
Federal Ghetto-ization
Baltimore—like a host of other old central cities in the U.S.—has for the past couple of generations been an ulcerating hole surrounded by affluent towns where the sane people with money would rather live. The ostensible reason is the flight of the pale, pale middle class while those with less access to capital—and who tan easily—remained stuck in the middle. Most folks take the decline of the American city as some sort of mysterious but certain given…like ageing and death…but I still point the finger of blame squarely at government.
Government at all levels—local, state and federal—is directly responsible for hobbling our cities, draining them of their human capital and mentally and economically crippling those that remain. And all the programs to “help” the cities after the initial wounding just wound up making things worse. Government created the problem and all its supposed balms turned out to be poison. Of course, this is government we speak of…so we really shouldn’t be surprised. Friend Jim Kunstler has made the point that the suburbanization of America was the manifestation of the will of the masses to escape the nightmare of the industrialized city…and that’s true…but it was the federal government that greased the wheels on that particular road to hell. They built the highways and subsidized the housing tracts miles from the daily necessities of work and commerce. They knocked down the neighborhoods in the old core cities and replaced them with housing projects where the poor devolved into listless and violent wards of the state.
I suspect that market forces would have worked to keep the cities and suburbs in balance, that they would have fostered the co-existence of multiple modes of transit between them, which in turn would have kept center cities and surrounding towns both distinct and compact, both internally walkable and efficiently linked by road and rail. Instead, the federal government catered to the fantasy that no one should ever have to walk again anywhere. In turn the built environment transformed into a place where no one can ever walk. A byproduct of all this is that the land between distinct urban zones that used to be devoted to local food production (“farms”) has been gleefully paved over to cater to the auto-dependence fetish.
Allow me to anticipate the criticism that I’m just a Luddite and an anachronist in love with some romantic notion of pre-automobile life…and that I’m nurturing an unreasoning but increasingly popular hatred of suburban icky-ness. What I am is a realist. Our living arrangement is an affront to human instinct…and it was never sustainable. We are returning—as things do—to the mean. We are going to be inhabiting our cities in a way more in line with how other humans have throughout history…and in the process we are going to be reversing the federally-funded ghetto-ization that has all but killed our core cities.
The Middle Class Comeback
The neighborhoods of Baltimore clinging to the Inner Harbor are actually quite wonderful…but I defy anyone reading this to venture for a stroll in the other two-thirds of the city. The resettlement of the city by people other than welfare-recipients, hustlers and muggers is well underway in those more pleasing precincts along the water, but the rest of the place remains marginal at best and downright seedy and dangerous at worst. The reason I felt so safe in my New York neighborhood and many others in that vast conurbation (with the notable exception of East New York and a lot of the South Bronx) was that New York has been experiencing massive re-colonization by middle and upper class people for years.
My own neighborhood in Baltimore is a curious case; it’s a nice collection of blocks just atop the so-so downtown and that inner ring around the water. It straddles North Charles Street which bisects the city into east and west; it’s surrounded on three of its sides by a ring o’ ghetto. The more disruptive inhabitants of that ring often wander on through. It’s especially bad after sundown. It’s best not to venture out too late at night, but if you do, travel in a group, stay on the main drag and avoid eye contact. In the movie referenced above the monsters come out in hordes at night and the hero has to board up his home and lie completely still till morning lest they find and devour him. Yet he could move about in the daylight in relative safety while the monsters hid from the sun. I know how he feels.
Reality has begun to trump the vagaries of energy excess, government interference and government misallocation. The middle class is choosing to move back to the cities, not because of D.C. diktat, but because of market forces. The lifestyle the feds sought to encourage with their highways, sins of railroad omission and their vigorous corralling of the poor within city lines…all of that is simply becoming unaffordable and therefore unsustainable. It’s all going away. Our cities will—must—become places where everyone can live again without having to get into a vehicle on a regular basis…or constantly worry about getting assaulted. The presence of honest citizens going about their business and doing honorable and necessary work will make the city streets much safer again. When the purposeful outnumber the idle, the tide will have turned. Lord, haste the day.
Regards,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
December 05, 2008
Gary Gibson
Gary Gibson is the managing editor for Whiskey and Gunpowder. He joins the Whiskey staff as a long-time fan and reader of both Whiskey and Gunpowder and the Daily Reckoning. A graduate of Fordham University, Gary now spends his days reading about and writing on limited government, sound money, personal responsibility and resource investing.
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Gary,
I agree that once again we’ve abdicated our responsibilities to “government” and government has failed. What began as “assistance” (help or charity might also be substituted) has become a way of life and a sole means of support.
As our economy has been changing since the post WWII days from a manufacturing base to our current service/knowledge base, so have the availability of jobs and the “freedoms” to get to and from those jobs. Yes, government building of roads catered to our increasing love of the automobile. The automobile also spelled the demise of public transportation as a realistic and useful means of transportation. The more we insisted on our “independence” and driving where and when we wanted to go, the less we used public transportation until it became too costly for the cities to maintain and continue it. The railroads realized the changing trends and began to emphasize freight traffic until they had all but killed passenger trains.
Amtrak has been a dismal failure simply because the dolts we’ve elected are too greedy and readily accept the largess of lobbyists for other means of transportation. However, the statistics for Amtrak ridership over the last few years are a challenge for even the greediest in Congress to continue denying adequate funding to upgrade and expand the system.
The social experiment of the 60′s and 70′s left the inner cities wide open to increases in crime. This isn’t any different in Baltimore than it is in any other major city. I was in Panama in May and saw the same thing. We were warned that if we went a few blocks in the old section of town, we should travel in a group and take a cab. Panama City isn’t much different from London, Paris, Zurich, or a multitude of other major cities. There are sections of any large city in which you just don’t go meandering around at night by yourself.
Here in the U.S. we’ve abandoned most of the factories, breweries, small stores and restaurants in favor of the malls, super stores, and niche “hot spots”. This left a decaying and abandoned downtown area inviting crime. Those not economically able to move were forced to endure it. I don’t believe they were ever given an honest chance to improve their lot in life or the protections they deserved to combat the increasing crime. Then we added the social changes, partly at least helped by the government, that contributed to the breakdown of the family and the need for a dual income. Children growing up in a single parent home were left unsupervised for periods of time thanks to the necessity of the parent to work. We took God out of our schools and prohibited our teachers from disciplining students. Without the proper moral guidance and a positive reinforcement of values we have only encouraged our young to do as they pleased without fear of punishment.
Having a society bent on instant gratification, lacking respect for authority, with no fear of possible punishment is a losing combination in any environment, especially one with little wholesum entertainment and uacceptable living “standards” (conditions). A return to the inner cities will only occur after they have been made safe for all citizens.
Thanks for listening. I regret any typos as my keyboard needs servicing.
Pete McCue
Gary,
Thank you for this excellent article. In response I must ask;
When you understand the federal government’s involvement in this problem and others such as Amtrak which Pete McCue mentioned , how can any sane person believe that government involvement in anything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, can result in any efficient or truly beneficial program in the long term?
When decisions are made by very large committees, whose members are dependent on staying in power by pleasing their constituents and most of whom would rather stay in power because of power itself, how can any degree of excellence be achieved? How can true efficiency be expected? Entrepreneurs have been the backbone of our culture, because they have been willing to make decisions that they can be held accountable to. They rise or fall on the wisdom of their decisions. Government cannot ever do the same! When is the last time you heard a congress person saying “Well I was wrong in my vote, it was a bad idea!”
The government’s best involvement in our lives is ensuring that the real freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, freedom to worship; freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of speech; and freedom of the press, continue!
A negative case in point. We as a country pour more and more money into education, but as of 2003 our eighth graders ranked 9th behind the Netherlands in science and 15th in math according to the TIMSS 2003 study. Furthermore, the education system hardly bothers to teach critical thought, instead focusing on instilling particular viewpoints. Whether it is urban development, education, health care, Amtrak or anything else when the government gets involved there is a decline.
The centers of the cities are seeing a renaissance because individuals and companies see merit in buying properties. If government stays out of it there will be prosperity.
The problem is they won’t stay out if there are more votes to hinder it than there are to encourage it.
Thanks
Brian Weerts
I grew up living IN the City of Detroit. Our lot was about 40 x 100. With a house and a garage, and a driveway, and the sidewalk and required setback, there was not room for a garden. I returned to Detroit after I got out of the Navy. Since GM was on strike, I was unable to return to my old job within the required time after discharge. I had several “jobs”, one of which was doing repairs to houses sold under the FHA 235 program–$99 down, and $99 a month, and the realtor was not qbove advancein the $99 down. All you needed was a regular income–read welfare check, to qualify. I credit that program with the destruction of our cities. My employer was a block buster–he’d start at one end of the block, and pay a fairly reasonable price, then proceed down the block yelling at the top of his lungs that the Blacks were coming, and you needed to sell before the price dropped any more. The last half of the block, he’d pay between 10% and 20% of the first one. Since he only recorded the first one, he was able to get his subsequent sales to appraise for what that first one went for. Since he was a licensed broker, what he did was legal, just unethical. The FHA appraisers were a bunch of crooks. We knew what had to be done, so we’d fix the broken windows, make sure the lights all worked, patch leaky plumbing, and give it a one coat paint job. We even had some stuff to coat the roof so it looked pretty good, too. One of my jobs was to meet the appraiser and tour the house with him. Since we knew the guys, we knew what brand he drank, and would have a case of it in the trunk. We always passed, and got our appraisal for what we wanted.
We even ended up beiong sort of a guarrantee service for a while. I asked one woman why she had a pile of cash in a drawer. She told me it was rent money, but the landlord never came to collect it so she just kept it because she knew she’d need to pay her rent one day. She was shocked to learn that she was the landlord, and she was supposed to mail it in to the bank every month. I guess she made it right with the lender, because she was the last house on the block that the lights were still on. The government was so incompetent that the people could live there for a couple years without ever making a payment, then it would take 2 years before the government got around to trying to fix the place up to sell again.
For the past 35 years I have lived in the county. I get most of my vegetables from my garden. I have a couple animals that mow the grass, and fertilize it at the same time. Annually, one of them goes into the freezer. I can take a deer if I want one, I can take wild turkeies and other game. You think I really should move back into the city? Down town takes about 15 minutes to get there from here.
John Harvey, you too are a criminal and responsible for this mess. NO INTEGRITY
Ken – what do you know of any of this – when the government got involved in urban renewal back in the early – mid 60′s, it became the kiss of death for the inner cities. Johnson’s “War Against Poverty” turned out to be a war against the middle classes who dwelled within the cities, and a free lunch for any woman who spread her legs and gave birth to more and more welfare babies with no chance of a real life off the mean streets. She got a fat check every month for all the “children” she was bringing into the world; never mind that the children would become the future stalkers and criminals of the rest of society, to fill our prisons and create a further burden on the system.
It’s the same today. Maybe worse.
I had to apply for social security disability income in February of this year as a result of 7 strokes that were misdiagnosed as sinusitis by our wonderful healthcare system ( and our premiums were $1,400.00/ month! – for the last 17 years).
When the big one hit 12 months ago, my working life was over at age 59. I wasn’t happy about that at all, but even walking was not easy anymore, and I had to learn how to speak again as well.
The scene at the local social security office was a wake up call to me that we are basically F___ed! Out of the 150 – 200 people in there, I was the only white person there, I was almost the oldest one there, and the dark side has got the system in a lock. Most of the people in there weren’t older than 30, all black or hispanic, and trailing kids or juvenile deliquents to be by the carload, all talking on the latest and best cell phones, listening to brand new I-pods, and waiting for a check. And they were all driving better vehicles than I’ve got, to boot – every one of them.
Since it was 11 am, I assumed they didn’t have a job, because they were all to hyper to have worked the night shift.
I made 3 different visits to that SS office on 3 different occasions – it was the same every time.
We’re screwed.
It is not the function of government to set up and run these programs that can’t be run by such an inefficient, top heavy organization, full of palms to be stuffed and Washington lobbyists. Social security used to be solvent, until Congress found that pool of money and decided it would be better if it were put into the “general fund” back in the ’70′s, to help pay for the debacle of the Viet Nam War, of which I was a part for 13 months from ’68 – ’69.
At least John Harvey got a job and worked back then, even if it was for a corrupt government; because that’s what was going on back then – you do it our way or the highway. Or you starve.
What would be your choice?
And what is so different today?
Which is exactly what VP Cheney has done to Bush’s administration – destroyed it through subterfuge, lies, abductions, and crimes that should be prosecuted in the Hague, except they all gave themselves a get out of jail card in March of this year. This administration has 1 huge criminal in it – Cheney – and quite a few minor one who have caused the rest of the world to HATE this great country. I pity Bush his ignorance and trust in such an evil person, a backroom backstabber from way back.
That is very sad, and will take a long time to resolve.
We should have thrown them all out back then. That was sheer complete fiscal irresponsibility, but the sheep in this country trusted the crap they were hearing on the only sources they had, which were being fed by Washington.
Why do you blame the government for what the blacks do?
The ghettoes are predominantly black, so that proves that it is black-based NOT government based.
You’re right. It’s those dang-blasted negroes. Animals, all of ‘em. Nothing at all to do with the government handouts weakening the race. The race itself is deeply flawed. Oughta exterminate ‘em. Lemme know when you’re ready to start the killin’!
Note to morons:
The postwar black ghettos are the result of liberal government’s attempt to bailout the black race. It ended up destroying the American city. It’s the same manner in which Prohibition resulted in organized crime; it’s not that Italians are naturally prone to criminal empire.
It’s nice to meet another black Austrian! Good article, Gary. Don’t mind that Bill idiot. You could have pointed out to him that black voters squashed the proposed California gay marriage deal in November, while the white voters sat on the fence, or would that be pouring oil on the fire? I do have one complaint about your comment to Bill, though. You said, “The postwar black ghettos are the result of liberal government’s attempt to bailout the black race.” I object to the use of the word “liberal” when (I hope) you really mean “libertine”. May I recommend the following 3 Wiki discussions on these topics?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
Enjoy!
Hello Jocelyne,
I meant liberal. How “moral” a person is remains their own business…as long as they do not attempt to harm or control my person or property, I couldn’t give a fig what they do in private…and I expect the same consideration.
I’m a pure Austrian, anarchist and capitalist…a true conservative in the sense that I believe government should be limited to absolute nothingness.
I hope we can still be friends.
And check out Wilton D. Alston!
Ohhhhh Mr. Gibson
You’ve become a moron magnet now, LOL!
I have no complaints, keep up the good work